Atlanta Half Marathon
Well, we can officially cross off one of my new year’s resolutions now! On Thursday (yes, Thanksgiving morning) I ran the Atlanta Half Marathon and as you can see above, finished!
My chip time was 2:10:37, putting me at right about a 9:58/mile pace. Considering I started training with the goal of 2:30 and was excited when my longest training run suggested that I may have a shot at 2:15 I was pretty damn happy with the result. I’ll be honest though, it was a little hard to watch myself slip away from possibly breaking 2:10 over the last couple miles as I slowed down. I knew I was running right around a 10 minute pace because every mile marker I passed the time ended in a ’7′ minute (27 at mile 2, 37 at mile 3, etc). By miles 6, 7 and 8 I was actually down in to the 6′s, and I think my earliest mile was around x:y6:40 so I was feeling great.
But then miles 11 through 13 showed up, and so did a lot of hills, and the shade disappeared, and suddenly I was just trying to keep moving saw those sixes slowly turn back in to sevens. I crossed mile 12 at 2:17:10 and thought I may have a shot, but it would require running my fastest mile of the race on my last 1.1 miles. Well, I ran my fastest mile, but it wasn’t fast enough. And so there I was, 37 seconds away.
The next few days were a bit of an adventure. Thursday night my knees really hurt which was a new, and quite unpleasant, feeling for me. Joint pain sucks I learned. They were mostly better by Friday although my hips were sore then. Yesterday I felt pretty much back to normal, and I’m actually going to run this evening to get back in the groove.
So there we go. 1 half marathon down, no idea how many more I’ll try or if I’ll try a marathon at some point, but it felt really good to finish that off before stuffing myself with Thanksgiving dinners for the next 3 days.